Space Bureau

• Designer: Andrey Kolupaev
• Publisher: Hobby World
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 60 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Welcome aboard, Captain, Sir!  The 10-XN class starship is ready for discovery. New worlds are waiting for us!    “Space Bureau” is a board game about space exploration in a tiny universe. You’ll be the captain of an alien starship traveling through the wormholes of hyperspace.

Your goal is to earn as many credits as possible and possibly receive a prize of galactic proportions from the Spacebureau, a microcosmic trade agency whose creation 100 years ago opened an era of interplanetary trade relations!  To do this, you’ll have to travel the small universe to discover new planets, bring trade representatives there, establish galactic corporate offices, and collect samples of alien products. Maybe you’ll earn enough to become captain of the millennium and have your picture on the bar wall of some dusty planet. Or at least scrape by for employee of the month. Godspeed!

Place the four starting tiles as shown in the rules (yes, the purple planet is intentionally one space away from the central starting hex).  Make the supply of other space hexes based on player count and also put the appropriate number of trade agents into the bag.  Unfold the bureau board and place it on the table. Place each player’s marker on the start space of the office maze.  Also draw out three trade agents from the bag and put them in the market spaces on the right of the bureau board.

Each player gets a spaceship board and chooses a cabin in their player color to put at the top. The fuel marker is placed on the 2 space, and the two storage limiter tiles are placed to cover spaces 10-15 on this track.  Each player gets a set of starting trade agent tiles (one of each color).  Players put their credit marker on the zero space of the track and their spaceship on the starting hex.  If you want a more advanced game, you can give each player an asymmetric Captain ability tile.

On a turn, the active player takes one of his trade agents and plays it to a space on his spaceship board, doing the actions on that space. Afterwards, the player chooses one of the three tiles available on the main board and then refills the market.  If there are no tiles left to refill the market, the game ends.

Each of the trade agents has connectors on them (small white arrows in a black rectangle).  When you place a token, it must be connected to a connector at the bottom of the ship or to a connector from a previously placed tile.  You do not need to match up all the connectors on your tile, one is sufficient.  You are allowed to rotate your tile when you place it, and this is important when considering future placement options.

Once you have placed the agent, you take the actions in the space just covered – you can take them in any order you want and you can skip any actions you don’t want to take.

• Gain fuel – move your fuel marker up the number of spaces
• Gain a sample – if your ship is on a hex with a planet or a megamall, you can get samples matching the color of the planet (any color from the mall).  Samples are placed in the rightmost available space in the fuel/storage bar. You may have to lose fuel in order to make room for a sample. 
• Increase storage capacity – remove the leftmost covering tile from your track, opening up more spaces on your track for either fuel or samples
• Place an office – your ship must be on a planet hex that does not already have an office, place an office which matches the color of the planet onto that hex. You will gain credits as shown on the token.
• Move a bureau marker on the bureau track – move your piece in the office ahead the specified number of rooms.  If you enter a bonus room, take those bonuses.  If you enter a room with a numbered level on it, you may flip over a bureau inspector tile on your spaceship board to the better side (1 connector to 4 connectors).
• Start a flight – move your ship, spending one fuel per hex moved. If you want to explore and add a tile to the board, you must spend 2 fuel to draw and reveal a space tile (and still pay the 1 fuel to move onto it).  You will gain the exploration bonus shown at the bottom of the hex.  You can move and explore as far as you want as long as you have enough fuel to pay for it.  If you end the flight on a hex with a planet, you can flip over one agent tile of matching color on your board. This will give you 2 credits. On a given turn, you can only flip one agent per planet you travel to. You can re-visit a planet on a later turn to flip over another agent of the same color

When all the actions have been taken, the player draws one of the three agent tiles from the main board.  If all three are the same color, you can place all of them back into the bag and draw out three new tiles at random before choosing.  If there are no tiles left in the bag, all players have one last turn and then the game ends (13 turns total in a 3/4p game).

The only endgame scoring is getting a bonus of 6 credits for each set of three different samples.  The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most fuel left.

My thoughts on the game

It has been awhile since I’ve played some of the new games from Russia, but since Furnace hit the scene, they have definitely been making it to game night more often.  Space Bureau is currently available only from Hobby World – there is not yet a distribution partner here – so it may be hard to find.

There is a pretty neat puzzle here in placing the agents on your board to get the actions that you want.  You will have to draw wisely from the market at the end of each round to give yourself enough options for the future. You will need to take into account both the arrows on the tiles as well as the colors (which are important for actions on the exploration tiles).

The exploration part of the game combines both strategy and luck.  If fortune favors you, the right colored planets will show up in places you are able to easily access.  That being said, if you place agents in the right places, you’ll be able to get the different colored samples or place your offices on the board.  

The third part of the game – the office board – helps you get bonuses as you pass certain rooms on the track, and they also allow you to upgrade the special inspector agents opening up arrows in all directions on your action board.  This special ability should not be overlooked as it will definitely give you many more options on what actions to pick from.

Space Bureau gives you a neat layered puzzle where you have to balance your progress in the different areas of the game, and you’ll be faced with a number of tight decisions when you can’t do all the things that you want to do.  It is another well constructed game from Russia, and I remain interested in seeing more games from that region in the future.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale, John P
• Neutral. Mark Jackson
• Not for me…